Shadow of the Vampire

Stylish tragicomic film about the making of one of the most famous films in film history: Nosferatu (1921) by F.W. Murnau. Murnau (convincingly played by John Malkovich) is portrayed as a dominant filmmaker completely obsessed by his work who literally works people to death. To shoot Nosferatu, the cast and crew move to a ghostlike resort in Czechoslovakia. There, they meet leading man Max Schreck (a sublime role by Willem Dafoe) who will play the role of Count Orlock. He is a strange figure who is a supporter of the revolutionary acting style of Stanislavsky (later known as ‘method acting’): he becomes completely consumed by his role, always wearing his costume and only appearing on the set after darkness has fallen. He is in fact a real vampire. In his ambition to make a superrealistic horror film, Murnau has made a Faustian pact with the vampire who, after the shooting period is over, will be allowed to plunge his teeth into the beautiful neck of diva Greta Schröder as reward. The bloodthirsty Schreck can however not wait that long and starts consuming from the crew one by one.Based on the script by Stephen Katz, Merhige made a clever and comic satire about filmmaking. An homage to the greatest time of the silent film, but also a critical ode to the process of filmmaking, that drags everything along this path.